


just say my name from day to day

by seeingrightly



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-09-14
Packaged: 2018-08-14 23:41:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8033545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seeingrightly/pseuds/seeingrightly
Summary: Andrew was on the balcony of his apartment, smoking and reading the most recent book Renee had mailed him, when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He dog-eared the page and flipped the phone open and waited.“Hey,” Neil said, and after a moment of silence he continued, “Has Nicky texted you anything weird lately?”





	just say my name from day to day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theverytiredgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theverytiredgirl/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY MELISSA this is not the werewolf au... or the #NestingNeil fic... this is the i-got-tired-of-reading-plato-for-homework-and-managed-to-come-up-with-something-i-could-write-in-like-an-hour-right-before-your-birthday-started fic
> 
> title from miike snow's "back of the car"

Andrew was on the balcony of his apartment, smoking and reading the most recent book Renee had mailed him, when his phone vibrated in his pocket. He dog-eared the page and flipped the phone open and waited.

“Hey,” Neil said, and after a moment of silence he continued, “Has Nicky texted you anything weird lately?”

“Probably,” Andrew replied around his cigarette.

There was a lot of shuffling around on Neil’s end; he’d probably just left practice and was heading into his apartment with his gym bag and a bag of take-out that would make Kevin glare.

“Okay,” Neil said eventually. “Well.”

Andrew thought about flipping the book back open, but he was only a few chapters in, and even with Renee’s notable ability to send him things he’d usually finish, there wasn’t enough happening in the book yet for Andrew to even pretend it was more interesting than the anticipation of Neil saying something he didn’t want to.

He let the book slide off his lap and got as comfortable as possible in the rusty chair. Nicky, offended by its ugliness, had threatened to throw it off the balcony once, so Andrew had nearly actually done it.

“Are you on the balcony?” Neil asked.

He liked to do that, confirm that he knew Andrew even when he wasn’t looking at him. At first it had annoyed Andrew, who wouldn’t have expected to have a reaction at all, but he was doing it too, tracking Neil’s days, pinpointing him on a mental map. He didn’t like that he preferred it when he knew, when he was right. He was more annoyed with himself for doing it than with Neil.

Andrew didn’t bother to answer.

“Oh, shit,” Neil said to himself, followed by a clattering sound, something knocked over, something dropped maybe.

Nothing but rustling for a few more moments. Andrew held smoke in his lungs, tilted his head back, released it into the darkening sky.

“I spilled lo mein everywhere,” Neil said, sudden and close. “I know you were dying to know.”

His tone was easy and comfortable, fond enough that if he was there in person Andrew would push his face away. Andrew hadn’t even spoken in several minutes. It would bother him if, in those moments, Neil wasn’t filling in his silences with things Andrew would say if he said more.

“You’d think you were a professional athlete,” Andrew said.

“Don’t change the subject,” Neil laughed, even though he hadn’t introduced an initial subject, even though that wasn’t an actual invitation to talk about Exy, not that Andrew expected anything else.

He could practically hear the amusement shift to something like hesitance. He let go of his cigarette and lit another.

“What,” he said, and Neil sighed.

“Nicky’s been harassing me about coming to visit you for your birthday,” he said in a rush. “I don’t know why he cares so much, seeing as _you_ don’t care about your birthday, and we didn’t do anything last year because I had midterms and you had a game so I wasn’t sure - I was assuming nothing was going to happen, but I mean, it can. Happen.”

Andrew let that hang in the air for a long moment. There was a cigarette, lit and then immediately put out, on the ground next to his chair. Muscle memory, to light an extra.

“You have a game halfway across the country that morning,” he said.

“Yeah,” Neil said. “I can fly from there straight to you, after.”

“I have an away game the next morning,” Andrew added.

“Yeah,” Neil said slowly. “I mean, I can still - or I don’t have to - ”

After a good few years of interacting with people in almost normal ways, Neil still wasn’t very good at navigating it, still got tripped up. He forgot, sometimes, especially with distance, how straightforward Andrew was, that all he had to do was say what he meant, ask what Andrew meant.

“We’re both free the next weekend,” Andrew said.

“Oh,” Neil said. “Okay, yeah.”

He let out a quiet breath. Andrew could see the line of his shoulders relax. Neil moved his dinner around, quiet scratching of fork on plate, a chair pulling out from the table Andrew had scraped his leg putting together.

“Hey,” Andrew said. “Tell Nicky to stop texting me about whether I have birthday plans.”

Neil laughed.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [lydia---branwell](lydia---branwell.tumblr.com)


End file.
